Posted by Peter Ceresole on November 12, 2013 at 10:21:35 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: NLCS was: Lakeland Cam posted by Roger Wardale on November 12, 2013 at 01:53:51:
Peter C — The mention of trunks only explodes the theory if you think that AR, unlike Homer, never nodded.
Oh, I always thought (think) that AR was a chap writing for a living, and got it right to the greatest extent that he could. And that was remarkably good.
It's like identifying authors with their characters; easy to do but usually wrong. However I do believe that AR did put himself into the books, in an idealised form. Not captain Flint, although I'm sure that he satirised himself a bit there, but in fact the Ds. Dorothea was him as a writer, and someone who could get on with others with ease and instinctive skill; 'Nobody ever was angry with Dorothea' (WH). I think she was both AR and Tabitha, as he wished they could have been. Tabitha caused him terrible suffering, and Dot was his way of imagining her as she might have been. And Dick was his other side, the scientific instinct that he also had. The punctiliousness that led him to research his stories more than most authors would. But every now and again causing himself minor troubles- like the radar towers at Bawdsey in WD, which skews the time frame of the stories, but not in any way that matters.
It's all craft; keeping balls in the air. And AR was damn good at that.